Longitude

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Latitude corresponds both to the sun’s altitude in the sky (at noon) and to the altitude of certain stars (if you are in the Northern Hemisphere, Polaris is a good choice) at night. This unique skill allowed him to devise innovative solutions that ultimately led to the creation of accurate maritime chronometers.

By 1995, Sobel had witnessed the proliferation of relatively highly accurate quartz time-telling and was beginning to see the spread and use of personal devices with signal-controlled time. For centuries, thinkers have understood that the answer was measuring time, and eventually two possible solutions emerged. On a West Indies trip the pocket chronometer worked perfectly, but the astronomers on the board dawdled about awarding the prize since they were now enamored with an astronomical solution. It's surprising to realize that it was not until the middle of the 18th century, when Jon Harrison invented the chronometer—"a clock that would carry the true time from the home port, like an eternal flame, to any remote corner of the world"—that sailors could count on finding their way by reliable devices.In the tradition of praising people whose work made it possible to do things a little better - in this case navigate across seas using a map. But prior to the eighteenth century clocks didn’t work reliably in the rough environment of ships at sea, so the London clock would be off. At the same time another less known figure; a skilled watchmaker from Lincolnshire named John Harrison who was stimulated by the scientific and the monetary factors surrounding this riddle decided to find a solution of his own.

g. following moons of Jupiter or the movement of the Moon over the star sky to find out the precise time. Everybody knows about longitude but I guess not so many know the struggles and fights behind the tries to 'conquer' it, including myself. Without Harrison and his chronometers, Great Britain would not have had the success it did in establishing and maintaining its empire, making one British astronomer’s personal vendetta against Harrison and his chronometers all the more damning.Eventually she did visit the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, where the four clocks that James Harrison constructed are exhibited. But it’s good to know that if the GPS network ever goes down, there is at least one museum I can rob for some high-quality longitude calculation devices.

An extraordinary tale of political intrigue and academic back-biting, of intellectual brilliance, and mechanical genius, of heroic endeavours and downright dishonesty … a superb achievement.The constant changes in pressure, humidity, and temperature played havoc with the fine mechanisms that allowed clocks to keep time. Lacking the ability to measure longitude, sailors throughout the great ages of exploration had been literally lost at sea. Meanwhile, finding longitude was ridiculed as an impossible quest, on par with perpetual motion and squaring the circle.